A Conversation with Doug Stanhope – HuffPost 10.24.12
Mike Ragogna: And now the madness ensues with Doug Stanhope.
Doug Stanhope: Now I feel like I’m under undue pressure to create madness that I don’t really feel because I’m all sober and what-not.
MR: Nah, let’s just celebrate Stanhope! You have a new album, Before Turning The Gun On Himself. The cover is a microphone stand with a blood splash on the wall.
DS: Yeah, it’s hard to call it a new album because we taped this in July of ’11. With the label, there’s all sorts of fingering around, trying to get it out. We released it in March in the U.K. We were going to release it here, but then Showtime picked it up, and then Showtime had another ninety day window after airing it before we could release it here. So, this is almost an old album, but now you can get it.
MR: What are you doing on the road lately? What has life been like?
DS: We’ve been on the road a ton. I did a few months back, driving in a van with friends, which is a blast; I want to do more of that, just constant road.
MR: Is that how you get inspired, jumping into the car with your friends?
DS: I don’t know if that inspires me, but I have a great time. I could really care less about inspiration at this point, I just want to have fun. I’m way closer to dead than I am to life of the party.
MR: So, how do you put one of these projects together then? How are you getting this material together?
DS: I have no idea where the material comes from. It’s like asking me where ideas come from; I don’t know. You have material, you have stuff that bothers you, you have stuff that’s funny, and you pound the road until you’re so sick of saying it that you have to put it on a DVD so that you can never have to say it again. Then, a year and a half later, it comes out, and you’re doing an interview where you don’t remember what the hell is on the album. (laughs) But I know I liked it.
MR: On one of the tracks on here, I love the title, “AA Is A Poorly Constructed Cult And Doesn’t Work.”
DS: Yeah, that comes off the Dr. Drew (piece). That would have been probably a twenty-five minute chunk if I had put everything I said about the subject onto the album, so I had to cut it down and shove it into two tracks. Yeah, AA is a horrible cult. I just saw a new show last night with some new kind of intervention where some guy went to Dr Phil for an intervention. It’s junk science. It’s bad medicine. It doesn’t work. Statistically, it works no better than just quitting cold turkey, only they tell you that’s not possible. I grew up in that cult with my mother going to AA, and I believed all that stuff. Now, you have mainstream shows that push twelve step programs. It’s vulgar. If anyone ever read through the big book of AA–any intellectual– they would be aghast that that is the main route for curing addiction.
MR: I actually have been to just a couple of AA meetings in my past, and the only I can remember were the cigarettes and the coffee.
DS: Yeah. I don’t know if you can still smoke there. It would probably be the last place on Earth that you can smoke in public. I might join just so I can go somewhere to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes because that’s what I do when I write, and you can’t do that anywhere but the privacy of your own house. Maybe I should go back. There is a religious aspect to it. I think four or five of the steps have to do with God, but if you get a DUI, in some places, they’ll sentence you to go to AA meetings. It’s the most blatant breech of The Separation of Church and State. You’re saying that in order to pay my dues to society, I have to go pretend to believe in God for six weeks? Bulls**t.
MR: Man. Okay, tell me about “It’s A Party, Not Daycare, A**hole.”
DS: Yeah, that’s a just a quick aside to people that bring children over to your house when you’re having a party. Since I moved to Bisbee, Arizona, it’s kind of awkward because there are a lot of tracks that are specifically about people I know, and it’s a very small town. So, when this was aired on Showtime, I kind of walked around with my head down for a while, wearing dark sunglasses in case people were angry.
MR: So, there’s your inspiration, the folks you know.
DS: The word “inspiration” is so flowery, it queers my stomach, like there’s some great comedy muse out there and I must find it. You hang around, you drink, you talk s**t, and then you say, “Hey, that’s funny. I should write that on a cocktail napkin.” I’m not sitting around stroking some goatee, staring at the sky thinking, “What shall I do with my art? How shall I be inspired?”
MR: So, this album will be released in the U.S. soon, but it’s been internationally renowned for a while, right?
DS: I don’t know about renowned, but I guess we did well on Amazon. I don’t know; once we put it out, I leave it like a body in the woods. I don’t do a lot of follow-up like, “Hey, what are our numbers?” I’ve never been that guy.
MR: I hear Sarah Silverman thinks you should have your own show.
DS: Yeah, I like that. I like Sarah Silverman, but I’d never want to hang out with her. She’s a pothead, I’m a drunkard–don’t mix well. They just makes drunkards paranoid, and drunkards bother the hell out of potheads. So, I’d like her from a distance, on Twitter.
MR: What advice do you have for new comedians?
DS: Don’t suck. Gosh, I think of how many times I’ve said, “Stick with it.” Write a lot. Ask yourself how many times people have told you you’re funny in general. If you’re not funny…that’s the thing. I would have told Dane Cook to quit. If I saw Dane Cook doing what he was doing for the first time and he asked for advice, I’d go, “Sell shoes. That’s not funny. It’s not funny to me.” So, my advice is worthless. If you enjoy doing it, do it. Enjoy your day. If you’re enjoying your day, if you’re having fun, who cares. Just do that. If you’re funny, people will find you.
MR: By the way, your run on The Man Show was outrageous.
DS: It was horrible. Pathetic. It’s so pathetic that I can laugh at it. Everything I’ve ever gotten a credit for is stuff that I’m embarrassed by. All my good stuff no one has ever seen.
MR: Well, next time we get together, we’ll talk about everything you’ve never shown.
DS: Alright. (laughs) I’ll get some clips to you.
MR: Doug, I really appreciate it. All the best in the future.
DS: Alright, thanks.
Transcribed by Ryan Gaffney